The utilization of desktop application programs is typically a single user experience. There are times, however, when it is desirable for several remotely located computer users to collaborate on a document by sharing the screen display of the same application program and synchronizing their interactions with the application program. For instance, it may be desirable for several remotely located computer users to jointly utilize a World Wide Web (“Web”) browser application program to collaboratively browse the Web (referred to herein as “co-browsing”). It may be similarly desirable for several remotely located computer users to collaborate on other types of documents by sharing the screen display of other types of application programs, such as word processors, spreadsheet application programs, presentation applications, and others.
The most common way to share a view of a document is to utilize a screen sharing application program. Screen sharing involves capturing images of an application program displaying a document at a host computer, transmitting the captured images to one or more participant computers, and displaying the images at the participant computers. Screen sharing, however, suffers from a number of significant drawbacks. For instance, screen sharing consumes significant computing resources and network bandwidth, and may impose considerable latency at the participant computers following a change to the screen display at the host computer. Moreover, screen sharing may be impracticable if the host computer has a much higher display resolution than the participant computers.
Another method for collaborating on a document involves sharing the location of the document among the collaborators. For instance, in the context of co-browsing, the uniform resource locator (“URL”) of the Web page that is to be viewed may be shared among the users. Each user may then individually utilize a Web browser application to directly load the Web page using the URL. While sharing URLs in this manner does not suffer from the same drawbacks as screen sharing, it does suffer from other drawbacks. For instance, when co-browsing using URL sharing a user may be presented with a different view of the Web page than the other users or may not be able to access the page at all depending upon their access rights to the page. Moreover, it can often be time consuming and complicated to share the locations of the documents that are to be collaborated upon among the users, such as, for instance, through the transmission of electronic mail (“e-mail”) messages or other communications that include the document locations.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the disclosure made herein is presented.